o intrench; so that this
gallant band had checked the progress of a strong detachment of the
Confederate army. This stoppage of Lee's column no doubt saved to us the
trains following."

[Illustration: Major Atherton H. Stevens

4th Mass. Volunteer Cavalry]

The First United States Flag Raised In Richmond After the War.
By Mrs. Lasalle Corbell Pickett,
Wife of Major-General George E. Pickett, C. S. A.

The first knell of the evacuation of Richmond sounded on Sunday morning
while we were on our knees in St. Paul's Church, invoking God's protecting
care for our absent loved ones, and blessings on our cause.

The intense excitement, the tolling of the bells, the hasty parting, the
knowledge that all communication would be cut off between us and our loved
ones, and the dread, undefined fear in our helplessness and desertion,
make a nightmare memory.

General Ewell had orders for the destruction of the public buildings,
which orders our Secretary of War, Gen. J. C. Breckenridge strove
earnestly but without avail to have countermanded. The order, alas! was
obeyed beyond the "letter of the law."

The terrible conflagration was kindled by the Confederate authorities, who
applied the torch to the Shockoe warehouse, it, too, being classed among
the public buildings because of the tobacco belonging to France and
England stored in it. A fresh breeze was blowing from the south; the fire
swept on in its haste and fury over a great area in an almost incredibly
short time, and by noon the flames had transformed into a desert waste all
the city bounded by Seventh and Fifteenth Streets, and Main Street and the
river. One thousand houses were destroyed. The streets were filled with
furniture and every description of wares, dashed down to be trampled in
the mud or buried where they lay.

At night a saturnalia began. About dark, the Government commissary began
the destruction of its stores. Soldiers and citizens gathered in front,
catching the liquor in basins and pitchers; some with their hats and some
with their boots. It took but a short time for this to make a
manifestation as dread as the flames. The crowd became a howling mob, so
frenzied that the officers of the law had to flee for their lives,
reviving memories of 1781, when the British under Arnold rode down
Richmond Hill, and, invading the city, broke open the stores and emptied
the provisions and liquors into the gutters, making even the uninitiated
cows